A big part of the value of a bi-directional HubSpot & CRM Sync (with CRMs such as Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Sugar, Zoho, ConnectWise, Pipedrive, Insightly, Autotask, etc.) is tracking the progression of a contact from initial marketing touch all the way through becoming a customer and beyond.

The mechanism to do this in HubSpot is using the Lifecycle Stage field, and given the interrelationship between this field and the syncing of data, we created this article to explain the key concepts and considerations.

HubSpot Lifecycle Stage

Typical Scenarios for Triggers/Handoff

The first consideration is “When should I sync contacts from HubSpot to my CRM?”. In Bedrock, you can control this using a sync workflow such as “HubSpot Lifecycle Stage =” one of the specific values from the above list.

“Subscriber” is usually not a good option for this, as CRMs require a minimum set of data for creating a new lead (First Name, Last Name, Company, etc.) and your subscriber collection may not have all of this data - so it would be premature on the CRM side to create a new record.

We usually see customers choosing from one of the next three stages as their sync trigger: Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead or Sales Qualified Lead.

Lead works well when you want to ensure your lead database is available in your CRM. Likely your team following up on leads (BDRs/SDRs), is using that connected CRM as their day to day interface, and you want to ensure, the full lead database is available to them.

Marketing Qualified Lead works well when you want to automatically trigger leads to be handed off from marketing in HubSpot, to a sales team in the CRM. On the HubSpot side, you could have multiple scenarios triggering the advancement of lifecycle stage to Marketing Qualified Lead - e.g. filling out a form, taking specific action, reaching a certain lead score. The Marketing Qualified Lead is the handoff point, and by tagging all of these as marketing qualified leads it keeps your reporting clean.

Some customers want to have an extra qualification step in HubSpot before syncing records to the CRM. Maybe the BDR or SDR team is using HubSpot as their main interface for lead follow up. This is a great way to incorporate HubSpot CRM and sales tools features into your process. In this case, Sales Qualified Lead works well as the trigger point, because MQLs can be routed to the BDRs in HubSpot - and once qualified they update the stage to Sales Qualified Lead and then the record syncs to the CRM and is assigned to a salesperson on the CRM side.

Syncing Company & Opportunity Data from CRM back to HubSpot

Now over on the CRM side (again any of the systems we noted above - Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Sugar, Zoho, ConnectWise, Pipedrive, Insightly, Autotask, etc.) - now the lead or contact is being managed on the CRM side. This contact may be part of an account, and may be converted to an opportunity - and all of three of these are objects that Bedrock typically syncs back to HubSpot.

This HubSpot knowledge base article details two key setting to be aware of back on the HubSpot side, for how you want these company & opportunity records to impact your lifecycle stage on HubSpot contacts:

Enabling the Lifecycle Stage Sync will set a rule that when a company’s lifecycle stage changes, that change will sync across all contacts on the company.

Enabling the Sync Lifecycle Stages to Associated Contacts & Companies, will ensure that the lifecycle stages of associated contacts and companies will change when a deal is created or closed as won. When a deal is created, the lifecycle stage of associated contacts and companies will change to Opportunity. When a deal is won, the lifecycle stage of associated contacts and companies will change to Customer.

These two settings will ensure you have automation in place on the HubSpot side to update the contacts’ lifecycle stage (for all contacts associated to those companies).

And then you use various HubSpot reports - you will be able to not only track your leads, but tracking the progression of those leads through to opportunity and customer - and get more insight in terms of what is working on the HubSpot side to contribute to those outcomes in CRM system. This Bedrock article covers more on the various HubSpot reporting options to use this data once you have this process in place.

And for more on any specific HubSpot-CRM integrations, check out these pages below: